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Who knew that there was an alternative to Facebook? The site that more than a billion people use has an alternative. This Facebook poser is called Diaspora. It is a site where the user controls everything. Diaspora is a very private site.

The hype built up until it was finally released on September 15, 2010. During this time, Facebook was in a decline because they were making extreme changes to the privacy settings. The creators of Diaspora thought this would be great timing to come out with the new site.

Facebook has a lot of pros. It makes life easier by having a lot of features. You can keep in touch with people easier, share your adventures through your photos, chat with one another, and lets your friends know what places you have been to.

On the other hand, Facebook has a lot of cons. There is very little exclusivity. People’s information is too much out in the open. If you are friends with me, you can see my gender, birthday, school, religion, email address, photos, family members, relationship status, where I interned, and where I am currently (Barcelona). That means that all 1,481 of my friends can see all of this information. Realistically, I am not close with all of these 1,481 people. 250 are probably people that I see on a regular basis, 100 people are my actual friends, 500 people I have met at most once in my life, and the rest are people that I have no idea who they are.

That means that 631 of my friends I don’t know. These 631 people have access to all of my personal information. Who knows who these people are? They could be terrorists, harassers, or pedophiles for all I know. This scares me. I really should go through and de-friend these 631 randoms. Who has time to do that?

My friend had a very scary thing happen to her via Facebook. She had a bunch of bathing suit pictures as her defaults. This man friended her. He is from New York (where she is from), went to a great college, and had a bunch of mutual friends. She thought, why not accept his friend request? A few days after the acceptance was confirmed, he started Facebook chatting her. At first, she was excited. A good-looking guy just a few years older than her is talking to her! They started talking about life. They spoke about who she was friends with, what college she attends, how many siblings she has etc. Eventually, the time came where he asked to meet up. She was a little nervous, but was also very happy. He offered a coffee shop as a meeting place. She was okay with it. He then backed out. He said he was prior plans. She thought it was a little strange, but just took a raincheck. He did that several times. At this point, he knew everything about her. She opened up to him as she would to any guy that she was interested in. It got to the point where she thought it was a little creepy that he kept backing out. She stopped talking to him as much. He then asked if he could come to her apartment at college and stay with her. She said no, but if he was in the area they could meet for lunch. The moral of the story is that she found out that he is a serial killer. He looks up girl’s information, and makes fake Facebooks based on the girl’s information. He has 7 different Facebooks for 7 different girls that he is talking to. He was talking to one of her friends, and she thought that was weird? Shortly after, they were on to him. The police got involved and he was caught.

Diaspora was a smart move. No one wants to be harassed by men that they don’t know. No one wants all of their information out in the open for anyone to see. People shouldn’t accept friend requests from strangers. Diaspora never blew up but it was a smart idea at the time.